


The Many Mothers

by Sapphy



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Ficlet, Finding a place in the world, Gen, Motherhood, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-25
Updated: 2015-10-25
Packaged: 2018-04-28 01:19:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5072404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sapphy/pseuds/Sapphy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's more than one form of motherhood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Many Mothers

**Author's Note:**

> There's nothing original here, and other writers have done this better, but since I'd finished it I thought I might as well post it. Enjoy!

It takes Capable a while to notice the names.

The first time one of the gardeners asks for ‘The Mother of the Green’, instead of the Dag, she just smiles. It’s a simple obvious nickname, but the citadel workers are simple people. The Dag is growing heavy with the child inside her, and spends all her time in the gardens, pale skin streaked green and brown with soil and plant juices. It’s a nice name.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Toast is a restless soul, always in need of some project, and people to boss around. In the Vault it had been the other wives (except Angharad, no one bossed her). Now she has the whole of the citadel to choose from, she appoints herself head of the work crews who are redirecting the water supplies, away from Joe’s cruel wasteful pipes and into sluggishly flowing troughs.

The work suits her, challenging her brain and body in equal measure, and giving her almost endless opportunities to boss people around. It takes time for the the ragtag crew of Warboys and Wretched she cobbles together to really respect her, but she browbeats them into it in the end, and they love her.

When Capable first hears something call for ‘The Mother of Rivers’, she looks down to see Toast, stripped down to pants and breastband, skin glistening with sweat as she assists the digger making foundations for the pipes, and smiles.

 

* * *

 

 

Furiosa starts like she’s been stung the first time someone calls her ‘Mother’, and the hapless War Pup corrects himself to ‘Imperator’, but it’s not long before the name is everywhere. ‘Mother of Freedom’ the young ones call her, and Capable uses it too, knowing the full meaning and weight the title has for Furiosa.

 

* * *

 

 

It takes Cheedo longer to settle in. She doesn’t find a calling so fast as the others, taking longer to plant new roots, as the Dag would say.

Her chance to shine comes when one of the citadel workers, the pale silent people that do all the jobs that War Boys can’t like cooking and cleaning, catches her in a hallway, begs her to help them because no-one’s been feeding them.

Cheedo feeds the woman, but instead of going to them herself, or haranguing the growers like Capable would have done, she finds the huge dusty ledgers used to keep track of supply and demand, and sits down with a pen to work out how things can best be allocated. And then, hands clenched to keep from shaking, she goes and finds the people who should be doing the supplying and persuades them to do their jobs better. It’s a role Capable would find unbearably dull, but Cheedo blossoms under the responsibility, numbers obeying her the way the War Boys had once obeys Joe.

She doesn’t get the same recognition for her work that Toast and the Dag do, but it’s not long before the well-fed workers are referring to her reverently as ‘The Mother of Plenty’.

 

* * *

 

 

Capable herself hadn’t know what her role should be. She’s too impatient for gardening or logistics, hasn’t the burning need to be doing that seems to drive Toast, or Furiosa’s calm certainty of her own place. She finds herself in the kennels almost by accident, but once she’s there she knows she’s found her place. So many scared angry faces, and she aches to help them.

She begins with the pups, the ones young enough to not yet be fully indoctrinated, teaching them their numbers, and compassion, and how to think for themselves. She does what she can to doctor them, keeping them fit and well, and finds people to teach them trades.

At first the full-grown boys are wary of her, sometimes angry, sometimes just confused, but when she approaches them for help teaching the younglings, they slowly begin to warm up. She watches over their lessons, intervenes when things get rough, does her best to teach them too, and slowly them come to respect her. And she comes to love them.

It’s not that much of a surprise then when one of the youngest pups, a boy of not more than 5 or 6 hugs her around the knees after a lesson and calls her ‘Mother to Multitudes’.

 

* * *

 

 

They’ve all lost children, but she’s coming to learn that there’s more than one way to be a mother.


End file.
